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In physical therapy, it is just the norm for insurance to reimburse us for physical therapy services. I would at least make sure that I show physical therapy students how insurance reimbursement truly works.

There is a difference between case rate, fee for schedule, Medicare, Auto and work comp insurance. That’s how you get paid the majority of the time.

2. I would condense what you are currently doing for three years into two years, and at the end of that second year, you would specialize in something during that 3rd year. The biggest problem with physical therapy is you come out as a generalist. Many people do residencies, which I think is a good thing, but I think it should be integrated into the regular PT program.

What do you want?

3. If you understand insurance, and can now make that decision on whether you want to take patients that have insurance or not, and you also know what area you want to specialize in, then now you are ready to learn marketing.

I would teach you all how to market yourself, and how to market to the group of people you want to serve with your physical therapy skills.

When you go to YouTube, and you put in “physical therapist”, my video became the number one video in ten months on YouTube. Do you know what that has done for my business?

YouTube is integrated with Google. If you do well on YouTube that means that everything that Greg Todd does on Google is going to get raised up as well.

On the first page of YouTube for physical therapists, I have three videos that rank in the top 10. My point in saying all this is that when people are searching for physical therapists, I am the main person in the United States that comes up.

So how do you do that?

You just have to know the formula.

Why couldn’t anyone in women’s health do the same thing? There’s nobody doing it because they are not teaching you basic marketing.

7% of people that have musculoskeletal conditions are seeing physical therapists; 93% aren’t, and it’s because the 93 % don’t even know that we can help them. A lot of times, we don’t even know what it is that we do because we are so generalized.

People say to me, “The days of owning a private practice are over”

Who is telling you that?

The days of doing private practice the way they did it in 1996 are over, but that has been over for ten years. Running a private practice has never been easier. It’s never been this simple; it’s never been this cheap, and it’s never been easier.

http://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/blog20617-7.png315560Greg Toddhttp://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PTB-300x148.pngGreg Todd2017-10-15 18:14:172017-10-15 21:32:403 Things I would Change in PT School

I love receiving messages or getting on the phone with these kids, students, and people that are 40-50 years old that want to take it to the next level. I love it.

Do not get roped into this overnight success.

Find people that you are passionate for serving.

Ask yourself a few questions, “Who would I want to serve?” “What would I love doing if money wasn’t an issue?”

That is your mission, that is your gift. If you can’t figure it out, sit down longer.

When you do that, then you can start figuring out how to serve those people.

That is the key. In the past I used to think, “I am going to grind hard in PT, and I am going to retire”

What is working better for me is thinking this way….which is that I needed to know how to enjoy myself in physical therapy every single day.

That’s what I needed to figure out. Once I figured it out, I had to start asking this…

“How can I get my staff to enjoy it every day?”

Then my next question was….

“How can I get other PTs around the world to enjoy PT every day?”

If I gave you $20,000 more per year, but you are freaking miserable, would you be ok with that?

You hated the types of patients you are working with, your boss, the environment, everything about the situation, but I gave you $20,000 more a year.

That’s brutal, right? It doesn’t even make sense. No, you are not going to put a jackhammer to my head and give me $10 extra per hour. You are not going to do that.

Stay within what you are about – stay within your truth.

Be in your element, stay consistent, and keep it real. That’s the key to success.

http://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/blog20617-6.png315560Greg Toddhttp://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PTB-300x148.pngGreg Todd2017-10-01 22:01:392017-10-15 18:17:41Physical Therapist Tip - How to Get the Results You Want

There is a young man and an old man walking down the street.The young man looks over and sees a dog on a porch. The dog is howling and crying with tears were coming down his eyes.

The young man said to old man,

Young man: “Do you see that dog over there crying?”

Old man: “Yup, he cries all day like that”

Young man: “Why does he cry like that?”

Old man: “Because he’s got a nail stuck in his foot”

Young man: “Why doesn’t he get up?”

Old man: “It’s not painful enough yet”

That story changed my life.

That was around the time that I was with a company called Cora.

The reason why I left to run my own practice was that it was too damn painful to stay with them. I didn’t like the fact that I had to see so many people and I had no options for those patients beyond formal insurance-based PT.

I didn’t like the fact that I was working on the tennis tour and players wanted me to go with them to other tournaments overseas, and my boss wouldn’t let me go.

It started to become too painful.

I don’t talk about it much, but I had a nervous breakdown, because of the stress of working for that company and the responsibilities I had with those pro tennis players.

I still remember that day like it was yesterday. That day, I lost it. That day I was there crying and lost my ‘ish. That day, the pain of staying the same was greater than the pain to change.

At that time, I had no money, and I had no major business sense.

But this is what I knew that day. I said to myself, “I am going to lose my marriage. I am going to lose my health. I am going to lose my mental well-being. And if I don’t jump and do my own thing, it’s going to get really ugly.” I knew that was it.

You are never going to be ready to take the SSPT course. You’re never going to be ready to become a consultant. You’re never going to be ready to start a practice.

Is the pain that you are currently going through so bad that the pain to change is less?

People have to crash and burn. That’s the only way that it’s going to work.

The Culmination

Story number two was when I was in Fort Lauderdale getting ready to run my first comeback half marathon, which was the Disney half marathon in 2011.

Seven of us who were going to run the Disney marathon together that weekend. My family and parents were going to drive up to Orlando that weekend to meet my staff for all of us to run the race. That night about 2 AM in the morning, I woke up sick and I hit my head, and was unconscious. All I know is that the paramedics were over me when I gained consciousness.

I didn’t know what happened. All I knew was that I saw my wife and my mom crying. They were trying to keep the kids in the room.

That day, the pain to stay the same was much more than the pain to change. That day I was willing to change many parts of my life.

Every single thing that you see in Smart Success PT… all of those innovative strategies that most physical therapists aren’t doing, was created from my pain.

That 2 AM moment on a Friday morning in 2011 was the culmination of all the things that I was doing and so many physical therapists throughout the United States are going through that right now.

That was my crash and burn situation that I wanted to tell you about. If those situations never happened, I wouldn’t have learned online fitness. I wouldn’t have tried Beachbody and other stuff, and I wouldn’t have sat down and started video recording every single thing that we do in our office.

I don’t know what else to tell you, but that story of the dog was my story. And I know it’s many of your stories as well. Many of you are currently in a painful situation.

I would have rather worked 9 am to 5 pm, come home, have a cold one, play with my kids, pet a dog, watch a show with my wife, go to bed, repeat. I wasn’t 22 years old and like, “I am going to be this entrepreneur”

But it was PAINFUL to work for people. It was PAINFUL to do things in the way that I was like, “that’s not right for patients, ” and that’s not the right thing to do. It was PAINFUL. And for me, the only reason why I opened up my own business is that the pain to stay the same was just greater than the pain to change.

That’s why I am hoping that many of you crash and burn… and I say that out of love because I know you can do it.

If you want to do something, you just have had to do it. Or you don’t have to, but one day your pain is going to hit hard. But if you want to cry and howl like the dog, go ahead, because at some point you have to get off of those damn nails.

http://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/blog20617-7.png315560Greg Toddhttp://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PTB-300x148.pngGreg Todd2017-09-24 17:09:592017-09-25 01:50:31Why Crashing and Burning Might Be the Best Thing for You

For the 16 years I have been in this PT game, being part of the 95% wasn’t a bad gig in 2000. But today, in 2017, if you are coming out of school with six-figure debt, being part of that 95% could be a problem. I had no desire to have a clinic when I started physical therapy school, and even when I did start my clinic, it wasn’t monetarily driven.

It was more from the fact that I couldn’t stand the way the insurance industry dictated care. It just didn’t make sense to me. I just felt like insurance starts to mess with your head, and it makes you treat people the improper way, and you are not using your head anymore. You are not using clinical judgment, and I just felt like I needed to have other options for people. That was my driver.

Whether you have your own gig or you work for someone, you are under the same pressure. If you don’t produce when you work for somebody, you are gone. If you don’t produce when you have your own clinic, you fire yourself. If you do great working for somebody, you might just get a little pat on the back.

But….. if you do great working for yourself; you can change your entire career and the trajectory of your family and generations to come,

I spend a good portion of my day now giving back to the profession. I believe there are many people out there that want to give back to the profession. But they can’t because they didn’t do what the 5% did. They are working for someone else, so they don’t have control over their time.

I am a business owner and I have learned my craft for physical therapy very well. I’ve taught it to other people and learned the systems of how to do the business of physical therapy.

Now, I can speak life into the profession. I can direct people to this profession, and I can ward people off from it as well. That’s what you can do if you have your own business.

Here’s my advice…

So here’s my advice if you are on a clinical….

If you want to be part of the 5%, then don’t just learn clinical….learn what the directors do. Learn what the owners do.

“Greg, What is the difference between a physical therapist being a good physical therapist and being an exceptional physical therapist?”

One word:

INVESTMENT.

That is the difference between a physical therapist, a good physical therapist, and an exceptional physical therapist. How much investment do you put into yourself?

Let me explain.

When you go to school, you spend $60-$150,000 dollars on your physical therapy degree to get that PT license.

But that just makes you a physical therapist. That was me in December 2000. I got my license, yippee!!!!. A year and a half into becoming a physical therapist, I decided I wanted to be great.

So I did 180 CEUs, you have to do 24 every 2 years in Florida.

For the average PT, that’s what they do in about eight years.
I did it in a year and a half because I decided the only way I am going to get better as a clinical physical therapist is if I invest in myself and I am going to go and do Continuing Education because at that time that’s all I knew.

I just thought that the way to get better is by becoming better technically.

So I did it, and I invested in myself. I did 180 CEUs over the next year and a half. It was a good thing because that led me to have the confidence to help more people.

A year and a half into that job, an opportunity opened up to move me into management. I probably would not have taken that if I was just an average clinical 1.5 year PT.

Because I had invested quite a bit in myself clinically, I was like, “I am pretty good for a year and a half physical therapist, so I can go into management and give me a near 50% raise.”

It did give me a near 50% raise. 🙂

Between 1.5 and year 4, I did get my CSCS, I did get my OCS, so I am not a clinical slouch here. And I did all my courses for MTC through the University of St. Augustine, so it was not like I was slouching.

Now even though I was padding the initials, it didn’t make me an exceptional PT yet….

To be an exceptional physical therapist, you not only have to invest in yourself beyond clinical, but you also have to get to the point where you are investing in others.

I will tell you the first thing that I did is I went to a personal development course. At this point, I am now 5.5 years into being a physical therapist, a year and a half into having my practice, and I knew that I need to become more well-rounded.

When I came back from that conference, which was a live event, I was a better person. I was a more confident person. I wasn’t tripping anymore when people’s insurances was $50 and $60; I had confidence in myself, I knew I was worth it.

That conference changed the game for me. The majority of physical therapist they could be 15-25 years out, and they struggle with that because they have no confidence in themselves.

It was stuff going on between the ears that I had to figure out, but I invested in myself. The common denominator here is INVESTMENT.

I am investing in myself.

So now I have a practice, I am hustling, I am grinding, I am doing my thing, but I can only see so many people.

So I hire someone, and again I am investing now in my business, and I am investing in someone else. And as I continue to invest in people, it turned me from being a good physical therapist to now an exceptional physical therapist. Today, I have more impact than 99% of physical therapists in the United States.

Not only I am doing what I am doing as a clinician, but I am training other people to do what they are doing and having the same type of effect. But I had to now invest in people.

The common denominator here is INVESTMENT

You will say,

“I am not there yet.”

“Well, you are, but you just haven’t come to terms with it.”

We invest $680 to $750 for every credit to get the licensure so if there are other things out there whether they are live events, courses, there are things that can make you better, you do it.

You just might not find it of value to you right now, but that’s the difference between a physical therapist, a good physical therapist, and an exceptional physical therapist.

http://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/blog20617-3-1.png315560Greg Toddhttp://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PTB-300x148.pngGreg Todd2017-08-27 15:38:102017-10-15 18:17:47The Difference Between a Good PT and an Exceptional PT

We have over 200 paid students in our PT Builder courses. To think I just thought of this idea. I said this idea in a DPT student group that I wanted to start to help PTs and PT students, and I acted on it, and it’s been a game-changer.

Yesterday my pastor talked about something, and he was talking about the difference between a Steady-eddy and a Flashy-Freddy.

Because we love Flashy Freddy’s like Usain Bolt!

But Eliud Kipchoge? He’s a steady-eddy, the winner of the 2016 Rio Olympic Marathon.

Meh….he’s boring right?

Everybody loves to hear the 6 Ways to 6 Figures in 30 Days or how you can become a great physical therapist in 2 weeks. We all love that stuff; everybody will buy that. But, nobody wants to hear the steady-eddy things.

A marathon is a 26.2-mile race. I have finished four marathons. In every single marathon, I’ve trained, and my training got more and more intense which each one I prepared for.

In 2008, I trained for the Disney Marathon – that’s the first marathon that I have ever run. Most of my training runs were anywhere between 8:45 to 9:30 seconds per mile.

I had planned to finish that race in 3 hrs and 50 min. I finished that race in f5 hrs and 37 min. I had hyponatremia; I drank too much water before the race, and I cramped up massively from the 11th mile.

But I am a steady-eddy, and I finished. Here’s the thing you know about me is that I will finish. You all might learn something quicker than me, you might comprehend something faster than me, but when it comes to a marathon, I am finishing. I am finishing anything I start.

I wanted a do-over after Disney, so I did the Fort Lauderdale Marathon about four weeks later. I was trying to finish that in under four hours, I finished that marathon in just under 5 hours.

The next year, I trained even harder to do the Chicago Marathon. I had a 21-mile training run that I finished in about two hours and fifty minutes; I was planning to do Chicago in 3 hrs and 30 min. I finished that marathon in 4 hrs:34 min.

4 hrs:34 min….. I finished that marathon, and unfortunately I got food poisoning the night before.

I was with my buddy Chris. I was ill for about five hours before the race and he’s like, “you can’t go out there Greg”

I said to him, “I sure can go out there”

Chris said, “Greg, you are going to kill yourself”

Oh well, I went out there.

And yup, I did start cramping up, and I did start dry heaving at eleven miles, but I had fifteen more to go, so I did it, and I finished it. I crawled my way to the finish line.

And then my final marathon was in 2009. I did the San Francisco Marathon.

I planned on finishing that one as a training run to qualify for Boston later on in the year, and I planned on finishing it in 3 hrs and 25 min. I finished it in 3 hrs 50 min.

It was my hardest marathon out of all of them. Again, it didn’t go exactly on how I planned it would but I finished.

Those four marathons typify my life.

Many of you that are reading this are smarter than me, many of you maybe even have a little bit more innovation, many of you might even have more connections in the PT field. I don’t have a whole lot.

I purposely distanced myself from most in the PT field until this year because I wanted to do things my way, and apparently, it worked.

Here’s what most of you aren’t going to do- you are not going to persevere the way that I do.

And my goal for every single one of you is to learn that. Because you know what’s so cool? Is that anybody can do that.

Anybody can just persevere. Anybody can just say, “I am not going to quit”. That right there is the common denominator that we all can have. I am just not going to quit. It’s not going to happen. If YOU want to stop, go ahead, but I am not quitting.

I also think that has been part of the secret sauce with my PT company as well.

My team has seen when I have gotten sick, and they see that I am not quitting. They see that back when we were relying on physicians and doctors pooped out on us, I am not quitting. They know that I will find different ways to do it.

They know I will never quit on them, and it’s just a reciprocating thing. My kids know I won’t quit on them, and my wife knows I won’t quit on her.

I want to tell you to be a steady-eddy. I don’t want you to be the “Soulja Boy” of PT. I want you to be the guy or gal in the game for 20 years; I want you to be the “Jay-Z” of PT.

When I found out that I can start monetizing my videos on Twitter, I went ahead and trained my students on how to do it. I learned it all so I can teach my students.

I trained them how to make themselves brand relevant in physical therapy because many people don’t know what physical therapists do. I believe that this is the best time to be in the field.

I’m not sure if you all saw this, but I did an interview webinar with Paul Gough recently. Paul is the owner of four cash-based clinics in the UK. What makes that so special is that right next door in his clinics, you have a free option.

It’s socialized medicine in the UK which I believe is where we are going to eventually end up in the US. It’s just moving towards that way, as you see what insurances are doing.

So… back to PG (That’s what I call Paul)…. There’s a free option, and then there’s Paul – the hundred dollars plus option, and he’s winning. Four clinics, I think he has 14-15 employees at this point.

If you keep on telling yourself “it’s a lie, that is not possible to do nowadays” that’s fine, you can think whatever you want, but I think you realize that it’s just your lack of belief. d

Paul explained step by step on how he brings in everything. Dude is winning, and he’s competition gives PT for free. LOL!!!

I want to talk about on a personal level, on why Paul and I, have a lot of similarities even though I have insurance-based clinics and he has cash-based clinics, but why is it that we both have managed to do well? Let me tell you a couple of things.

Number one, I do think that we both worked for professional organizations. Being that he used to work for professional soccer teams in the UK, and I worked with professional tennis players.

I think the advantage for us is that we saw what professionals do. We saw the levels that professionals are willing to work at to excel in their careers. The standard for us is very high. We both learned what high standards looked like, and I believe we followed it in our field.

I hate average

I didn’t want to be an average person. I am not talking about that I wanted a big car or a big house.

I am just saying that I didn’t want to stick to only having worth based on what insurance companies gave me.

Paul decided, “I didn’t want to do it the way the national healthcare does it in the UK; I knew there were going to be other options that I wanted to have for my patients beyond insurance.”

I just think we are both very stubborn. We are very stubborn people that didn’t want to do the status quo.

I think even though we are super stubborn, we are both willing to learn. Paul’s invested a lot of money; over $150,000 in himself, in marketing strategies, in learning the PT business, and in learning those types of things.

It’s a pretty amazing story that he has. Paul had enough for a pretty solid down payment for a home through his work with his clinic. Most of the people would have just said “no, let’s just take the home and live a very comfortable average life, ”

But he wanted something more, he wanted something bigger, and he told his family, “I think this is what we need to do.” and he did it. He invested in himself.

You know how I invest in myself. That’s why I don’t think we have a problem with asking people to invest in us. Whether it be for physical therapy services or it is if we are going to coach and mentor you, we don’t have a problem with that because we’ve already invested in ourselves, so we feel like we have worth. I think there’s a lot to this.

There’s probably like 15 more things that we have in common, but I am going to finish with this. I believe that we both have vision. It’s not that I can say that I knew I was going to have 20 employees or a virtual team of three full-time people but I just knew that I wanted something big, something that special to myself and others.

I knew that I was going to have a team of individuals that I would be able to mentor. If you’ve ever seen his youtube channel, you will see that he invests a lot into his people. I think he does 3 hour staff meetings weekly to help his staff!!! WHOA!!!!

I believe if you have some of those qualities, you can win big in physical therapy today. I wanted to tell that it’s never easy.
You could put into work, but at some point, you just have to say, “okay, it’s time to go, it’s time to stop listening, it’s time to take steps forward.”

That’s the difference; I am going to do it. A lot of people are like, “not today” and they lose. That’s the difference….I go for it. At the end of the day what I realize is that none of my critics are paying my bills. None of my critics are taking care of my kids, none of them are taking care of my employees, none of them are taking care of my boo, so say whatever you want, it won’t matter.

Most of them won’t coming to my funeral. If that’s the case, does it matter what people think about me? Does it matter in the big picture? And so many people live their lives based off of people that don’t care about them. But once you can get over that every day, that’s why I keep on pressing the button to go live daily. If I have five haters, and I got one person that I inspire, then we are going again tomorrow.

I am going to bring this back to the physical therapist. There are more physical therapists that are not doing it the way Paul and I are doing it, than those that are. And probably what’s standing in the way for many of you is the potential critics. You are scared to go outside of your comfort zone. Just understand that the majority of them are losing.

Just the way we are as humans, we would rather be more comfortable and feel more accepted by people that we believe approve of us. Even though they are not coming to your funeral, they are not paying your bills; they are not doing any of that stuff, so don’t let them dictate your path.

LEGGOOOOO!!!!

http://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/blog20617-4.png315560Greg Toddhttp://gregtoddpt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PTB-300x148.pngGreg Todd2017-08-13 16:13:112017-10-15 18:18:01This Is the Best Time to Be in The Field of Physical Therapy

Module one in SSPT goes over one thing, and every single week I discuss these modules in detail. I make sure everybody understands, “Okay this is what you need to get out of this module to enhance your career.”

Tuesday, we talked about module two, which is about goal setting, and I explained how we goal set your career. One of my students private messaged me on Facebook and showed me his goals.

He said, “You said I should come up with my goals, I did it exactly the way that you said it.”

So I told him, “Put it in the private group; people in the group need to be inspired. It’s not just about you; this is about everybody.”

What the power of association does is that he had to be the first one, he had to be the sacrificial lamb, he put it in the group, and guess what happened after that?

After that, the next person put their goals in the group 10 minutes later, then another person, then another one….

Somebody locked in with a deal with a fitness company, someone got a meeting with a documentation company for consulting, and the wins kept on coming.

At this point, more people have purchased my course that had implemented something than not.

Guess what happened? Everybody had to step up their game. Everyone had to do something because they realized that either you are going to be left behind or you have to get on your A game now because people aren’t playing and that’s what happened.

Maybe I am the ringleader. But if you create the right community and if you change people’s mindset and show them that you can get constant wins all the time and we aren’t losers, we’re just learning and we are all here to help each other.

Every single situation is a big win, or it’s a learning situation.

If we take that then we don’t get scared anymore, we are not afraid.
That is how you win big. What most people are feeling, either they are PT students, and they are like,

“I heard reimbursement sucks out there; my internship sucks. This stinks; my teacher doesn’t understand what I am talking about; I have a lot of debt.”

All you are talking about are losing situations. My students are talking like this,

My gift to the group is just showing them directions, but they are doing all the magic. We’ve created a bond of physical therapists that want to win, and honestly I don’t see that in a lot of other places. I see some networking; lots of bashing of chiropractors and arguing about techniques.

I don’t see, “hey I want to see you win because I am going to win too so you might as well win with me, ” and that’s what I see in this group and that’s why I say “it’s so magical.”

My message to you all is this. Look at the people that you are around the most. You can say it’s a cliche all you want, but it’s the truth. If you are around five duds, I can tell you right now that you are a dud.

I can’t be around you. I am just straight up about it. If you are in one of my groups, it’s different; you invested in me already, I have to invest in you.

Make sure that you keep the right company. I had to make a lot of big decisions in my career about the company that I keep.

When I went to PT school not being a solid group of student going into PT school; I knew I had to change my inner circle of friends, or it just wasn’t going to work.

I knew I needed to level up and honestly, I didn’t know how to level up. I didn’t know who I should be around, so I just did things alone.

My first two years of school, I did do things alone… I didn’t have much friends, but I did have a 3.9 GPA…and I got into PT school on the first shot.

I wasn’t an excellent student in high school. I had a weighted GPA of 3.05. Compared to my two other brothers, I didn’t get as much scholarships as they did. I got one scholarship that was a $250 scholarship/semester.

When I talked to an orthopedic surgeon that my mom worked for, he told me not to do his job, he actually told me to look into physical therapy.

At that time in 1995, physical therapy was hot. To get into physical therapy school it was apparent that it was going to take about a 3.8 GPA for me to get in and even that wasn’t a guarantee.

The average person that had got into the PT school had to wait a year and a half, meaning that they either got rejected the first year or the second year – and that was just the norm at the time.

I knew that I was a 3.05 GPA person, and to get into PT school I was going have to be at a 3.8 level.

I knew what I needed to do.

I had to step my game up.

If I was going to get into PT school, the crap that I was doing in high school wasn’t going to cut it.

Even at the age of 17, I had a goal. I told myself, “Okay I have to take myself to the next level” my first semester of college.

I was working at TJ Maxx in retail and my first semester in college I got a 4.0.

It’s the first time I got straight A’s since the 4th Grade.
I wanted to become a physical therapist. It wasn’t hard for me to work hard because I knew this is what I wanted.

That’s the thing about failing to plan.

Now, if I didn’t know what I wanted, why would I go that hard and push for a 4.0 in my first semester?

I think many of us in the profession; we don’t know where we are going. If you are reading this right now and you are in college, you need to sit down and ask yourself, “Where am I going?”

Physical therapy school trains us to be a generalist, meaning that we can do a lot of things okay. You can do acute, a SNF, work in an ALF, or do home health.

Just a little bit of everything but nothing definite. What is happening is most of us come out of school and we are like, “I don’t know, I just want to work wherever…”

We are not even asking ourselves “What do you want to do, and who do you want to serve.”

Once you know this is what I want to do, it’s straightforward to say “You know what, this is what I gotta do” that doesn’t mean you should have a private practice right out of school. But if you know this is what I want, this is where I am going, then now the path is clear.

Reverse engineer your career

Yesterday I got a message from a young lady who reached out to me. She’s a relatively new physical therapist, and she got this gig, and negotiated a decent salary.

Here’s the issue…she still wasn’t happy.

This is what she asked me via FB messenger.

“I have to ask you a question, how did you know when was the right time for you to take that leap? I don’t think I can do it anymore.”

She was defeated already and it just goes back to a lot of times we are just not focusing on this is what we want, this is our goals.

When I was at my last corporate gig, I already made up in my mind that I needed to have my own place, and I got to a point where the way that we were treating at that company was not in line with the way that I wanted to treat at my practice. I had the goal of having my own thing. It was there.

So I am like, “Okay, the jobs I had before this, it was leading me up to having certain skill sets. I was going to need to be able to start my own business. It got to the point where we are seeing too many patients, too many people per hour; I wasn’t able to give the care that I wanted, the way that I wanted. I wasn’t able to help people beyond what insurance was allowing them to come, and this is not in line with my goals.”

That’s the answer I gave her.

It wasn’t in line with my goals. But if you don’t have goals, how would you know if it’s in line? That’s what I teach in my second module in my SSPT course. It’s how to get your goals in line.

Most people have no clue what their goals are because they are not asking themselves the right questions. They don’t know the questions to ask. So they are just aimlessly wandering thinking something is going to poof and it doesn’t work like that.

Every single one of you can have whatever goals you want for your career, physical therapy or not, but you have to start asking yourself the right questions. Well, what are the right questions? Well, it’s in my course… 🙂

Do you want to know the common mistake that PTs make? Here.. Let me tell you the story on what happened at Chase bank.

I was in vacation mode; the place is sweet, we went out for a late breakfast, woke up like at 9:30, 10:00, then we went to a Chase Bank.

My wife is like, “we need to get cheques, and we have meant to do it for so long, ”

We just go to the bank and just get it done and Chase is open on Saturday. There are two people working in their little cubicles with customers, and then there’s a lady that I think she’s running the front, and she comes out to us, and she’s nice saying, “how can I help you?”

“I need to order cheques from my account, and I need it for my consulting account” I have my main business account at another bank, but I said, “I need to take my consulting account”

And she is like, “Well, sir, we can wait for one of these other people to finish but if you want we can go on to chase.com and we just probably order them there.”

Now, I knew I could order them there. I could have figured it out myself, but I wanted to go into the bank and deal with someone. Someone to order cheques for me, and I wanted to get it for another account.

I had a couple of questions about my consulting account, like certain things I might want to do specially because I have three full time employees that I am looking to move tomorrow.

But as soon as I went in, the person that was there was trying to show me how I can use this and how I didn’t need her.

Long story short is that she got sidetracked, someone else came into the bank, she had to take them, she said, “I’ll be right back”

And the other two dudes are still working with their customers. We were on our vacation, we weren’t going to throw a hissy fit but we decided, “let’s bounce, it ain’t that important”

I didn’t act a fool, and if you guys know my wife, you know that she is very quiet, but she can be angry black woman if she wants to and she can act a fool.

But we didn’t, we’re on vacation, we’re chilling. We went back and got some Mimosa’s and sandwiches. We’re just chilling. We’re on the beach, staying at the hotel. I said, “Sweety, there’s a lot of lessons back there,” and I want to share that with you guys right now. This has to do with physical therapy.

Physical Therapist Common Fail – My Story of What Happened at Chase Bank

We get pissed off when McDonald’s is now using computers instead of people to order food.

We get pissed off when we go into the bank, and now the banks got computers instead of people.

But you know what, physical therapist, they get pissed when insurances used to give us 25 visits for our patient and now they are giving us 20. Then it’s gone on to 15, then went out to 10, and now it’s 5.

We get pissed about that, don’t we? We get angry. What that lady did at Chase, I see physical therapists doing that all the time. A person comes in for physical therapy; they need help, the person doesn’t really care to do physical therapy, they just know that they need help.

“My leg is tripping; my knee or my shoulder” and you know that there is more physical therapist than not that do this, “you know what, I can just… why don’t I just print you out a whole program and save you money today and you can just take this and just go home and come back in three weeks.”

Isn’t that the same thing the lady did to me?

I went into the bank because I wanted to order cheques in front of you, I don’t want you to do it online, because I would have done it myself online, I am pretty tech-savvy I can figure that out.

Don’t sabotage yourself

As soon as I left that bank and I went to go sit down for lunch, I said, “that is our profession” we are sabotaging ourselves. We’re doing it all the time.

Before you can even wait for the person to say, “I don’t want to come for therapy” you are already like, “don’t worry you don’t have to come anymore.” “don’t worry you can do this at home” “don’t worry we can do this” it’s the truth.

As soon as I left there, I said, “that right there is our profession”

Then on the flip side, what I am teaching my Smart Success PT students is how to do the total opposite. It’s how to by asking the right questions at the evaluation. How to focus on what the patient truly wants.

What is their objective?

Do you their goals?

Ask them what they want.

We’re going to get you – I am going to get you to those goals, and I am not going to give you a whole paper program with stick figures and say, “that’s what I spent three and a half years to get a DPT for” I see that all the time. I am hearing that in some of my other groups, I had to answer questions from these people are like, “we can’t do that, can we?” it’s like we are that lady at Chase.

We’ve been conditioned by physical therapy.

That’s what our profession has become.

If you continue to do that, you know what my impression as a customer on Saturday at Chase? “I don’t need any of them; I will do everything online”

That lady does that to another person and another person, guess what she’s doing. She is showing that she has no value. She’s saying, “I have no value.” You could do it with me, but you could also do it online.

You could do physical therapy with me, but I can give you this piece of paper, and you could follow it too. It shows you have no value.

Eight months from now, when her regional director from Chase comes in and says to her, “Nancy, you are done here. Pack up your things and bounce” in a nice way obviously. She’s going to be shocked. But really, didn’t Nancy just create her ending by what she did to me on Saturday?

And what I say to you all is this, don’t be shocked if you keep on tripping. Don’t be shocked if you keep on dummying down and belittling the things that you do.